The installed environment of any device, having transmitter/receiver (Tx/Rx) functionality, modifies the effective transmit/receive characteristics of that device. For example, the installed environment may significantly modify the effective antenna gain of the antenna of the transmitter/receiver. Therefore, theoretical assumptions about characteristics of the antenna, such as the antenna's gain, which are made for the device in an unimpeded environment may no longer be valid in an environment in which the device is actually installed. As an example, a signal transmitted from an antenna having a theoretical antenna gain indicating a theoretical apparent received power of x dBM may, within a particular installed environment, actually be received with an apparent power of 2*x, or x/2. In applications that use measured apparent received power as a proxy for some other metric, such as, for example, a distance between transmitter and receiver, the deviation of the actual received power from theoretical values, due to changes in the transmitter's effective antenna gain, can introduce a significant error.